Author and Astrophysicist

Author: Adam

I’ve been tremendously lucky to have the opportunity to work with BBC Earth and Pomona Pictures over the past few months, creating a series of animated videos to explain ideas in physics, astronomy, and even a little philosophy. Here they are:

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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language affects thought — how we speak influences how we think. Or, at least, that’s one form of the hypothesis, the weak form. The strong form of Sapir-Whorf says that language determines thought, that how we speak forms a hard boundary on how and what we think. The weak form of Sapir-Whorf says that we drive an ATV across the terrain of thought; language can smooth the path in some areas and create rocks and roadblocks in others, but it doesn’t fundamentally limit where we can go. The strong form, in contrast, says we drive a steam train of thought, and language lays down the rails. There’s an intricate maze of forks and switchbacks spanning the continent, but at the end of the day we can only go where the rails will take us — we can’t lay down new track, no matter how we might try…

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Warping space and time ain’t hard to do. You’re doing it right now, in fact. Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that everything – you, me, even the Earth itself – warps space and time, simply by existing. This astonishing idea turns 100 years old today, and to celebrate, I recorded a short video with the BBC explaining how Einstein discovered general relativity. I hope you enjoy it!

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I got a book deal a few months ago! My book is about the sordid untold history of quantum physics, exposing the shocking secrets behind the strangest theory in all of physics. It’s going to be published by Basic Books, the same people who publish the Feynman Lectures and Gödel, Escher, Bach, among other things. This is really exciting – I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time.
As part of my research, I’m doing a sort of Grand Tour of Europe for the next month, interviewing people for my book…

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The Earth’s fate is sealed, sad to say. In all likelihood, it’ll be destroyed in roughly six billion years by the death throes of the Sun. But what about the end of the universe? That’s the question I answer in my newest feature article for the BBC…

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Why is it easy to break an egg, but impossible to un-break it? More generally, why is the past so different from the future? We can’t travel into the past, but we’re inexorably carried into the future. We can remember the past, but we can’t reliably predict the future. But strangely, the fundamental laws of physics work just as well backwards as forwards – so why do we perceive an arrow of time? That’s the subject of my new feature article for BBC Earth….

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Ever wondered how many stars in the night sky had planets like Earth going around them? That’s what this interactive feature for New Scientist is about. I built it with my colleagues Peter Aldhous and MacGregor Campbell, using data from the Kepler space telescope. Rather than taking up more space here, I’ll let the feature speak for itself; I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” Entanglement is the strangest feature of quantum mechanics — yet it might be the stuff that space and time are made of. My piece for New Scientist is about this strange idea, and how it might shed light on some of the biggest puzzles in physics….